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The Decentralized Economy Intro

Posted on June 26th, 2018 in DecentralizedEconomy by Brandon

The idea to create a technological solution to facilitate trustless, secure and immutable transfers of value over the internet is almost as old as the Internet itself. The current solution was built upon many brilliant but ultimately unsuccessful iterations. Each iteration developed new insights, technology and attracted new participants.

In 2008, every innovative design step came together in a short whitepaper called "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System." The Bitcoin whitepaper designed a peer-to-peer database that would maintain a global decentralized ledger of records allowing participants to exchange value without a trusted centralized clearing system. This innovation has attracted a lot of attention from every corner of the global economy including governments (both large and small), regulators, researchers, technology companies, financial institutions and startups.

It is speculated that this new technology has the potential to disrupt many of our current economic models and I encourage everyone to be well informed on the impact this will have to our collective community. To that end, I have created a short list of terms, ideas and system designs that provide some background information on this new paradigm.




Bitcoin Whitepaper
How it all go started: the original Satoshi Nakamoki Bitcoin Whitepaper. 
Source: Bitcoin.org

The Real Innovation: BLOCKCHAIN
A short (5 min) video describing the technology that powers Bitcoin and other crypto currencies. 
Source: YouTube

Peer to Peer definition
A short article comparing the centralized networks (client / server) to peer to peer networks. 
Source: BBC

Decentralized Systems
A good overview of the differences (both pros and cons) of centralized, distributed and decentralized designs.
Source: Vitalik Buterin

Economics of Blockchain
An academic research paper exploring the economics of decentralization using the blockchain.
Source: SSRN1

A high level overview of Ethereum. The article goes through the beginnings, milestones, contraversies and achievements.
Source: Wikipedia

Smart Contracts
A short, easy introduction of the who, what why and where of decentralized applications.
Source: CoinDesk

Initial Coin Offering (ICO)
The new way to raise capital. This article is a bit dated and there are currently a lot of unanswered questions surrounding this process.
Source: NYT

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations
A DAO can potentially offer a new way of organizing a company by using smart contracts, ICOs and a global peer to peer virtual network all on a blockchain.
Source: Vitalik Buterin

Coin Market Cap
A source for a number of crypto currency valuations, daily trade volume and background information.
Source: CoinMarketCap.com

Blockchain Explorer
An easy way to look up any / all Bitcoin transactions since the beginning of time.
Source: Blockchain.info

© 2018 Brandon Caruana. All rights reserved